Burning Serenity
by Iset Black
Summary: The red ribbon of fate ties people together in many ways, fate has a strange plan. Sometimes even the strongest of couples can be broken. UsagixMamoru


Burning Serenity  
By Iset Black

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Chapter One: Cannibal

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_**Juuban Towers, 12B**_**  
**_**4:10 PM**_

"Maybe we were never meant to be together! Maybe this is the Heavens telling us so!" Her voice cracked as she took another look at the vase of roses that sat forgotten on his coffee table. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks for what seemed the hundredth time that month. This was happening all too often; the crying, the arguments, the scornful looks and lack of trust.

Darien couldn't look at her, wouldn't look at her. Cell phone gripped firmly in his hand, he squeezed the mobile device until it left deep imprints in his palm, its plastic shell beginning to crack under the pressure. "It meant nothing! She meant nothing!"

Serena let out a shriek at his words, swung her fists at the vase, knocking it from the glass coffee table and into the wood flooring below. The vase, a Ming Dynasty replication, smashed into hundreds of tiny ceramic bits. Her breaths came hot and heavy as she continued to cry, whatever makeup she had worn that day pooling beneath her eyes, giving her a fierce look.

"I feel like I've been chained to you since the day I was born; the shackles of destiny tightly bind me to you! If I try to escape, the chains tear at my skin until I bleed, and then I bleed until nothing of me is left…" Her voice came in short sobs as she spoke to him, her fists balled at her sides. Still she continued to cry, her voice coming in choked rasps: "…nothing left at all. I've died for you more times than I'm willing to count, given you all that I am, my virtue, my heart, my soul. But still it means nothing…."

Darien, still unable to even take one look at her, shamefully bowed his head and unclenched the mobile phone. "So, what if I did sleep with her? You… _had __**Seiya**_." His tone was somber, mortification flooding him once he finally processed what he had just said. Unable to speak, Darien simply stared at the text message that had been the catalyst to this whole argument. How a few simple words could change everything was amazing.

Serena bit her lip as her body began to tremble, her heartbroken cries the only thing filling the silent void between them. "You're so messed up in the head, Darien. I _**never**_ slept with him, never even kissed him. I hope you're happy." As much of a struggle it was to say those words, she felt like the weight of a thousand Moons had been lifted from her heart, like she was free.

Darien's eyes shot up from the phone and to her face, his violet-hued optics suddenly terror-stricken. Was it true? Had Serena truly been faithful, even in all of her loneliness? "You – never?" Was all he could muster as he placed the cell phone onto the table next to him, took a few steps towards her. He took her face in his hands and stared into her shockingly blue eyes, as if to gage the honesty of her words.

At the age of twenty one, Serena was well practiced in the ways of being able to read people, having had to find ways to hide her feelings from her fellow Senshi and guardians. And at this one moment in time, right there in Darien's small, slightly dingy apartment, Serena felt like she was a lying whore and he was the betrayed, faithful boyfriend. At no point in time before then as she ever felt as much rage as she did at the one moment in time, the moment she saw her beloved's _**true colors**_.

"Get your hands off me!" Her voice came in another shriek as she pushed him away, horrified at the thought of his hands upon her in any way. He'd been with another woman, had touched another woman, had wrapped his arms around another woman, had held another woman close to himself as they made love, had given himself to another woman.

Disgusting. Sickening. Filthy. Nauseating…! Serena's mind screamed as she took one last look at him, her golden brows drawn in anger and revulsion. "How dare you touch me!"

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TBC


End file.
